SDF @ 36:  A free fall!.

On Tuesday when the party celebrated its 36 anniversary in solemnity, Dr Louis-Marie Kakdeu, its Second National Vice-President, in a commentary disseminated on the media, said: “Cameroon in 2026 is mired in the depths of recession because the CPDM lacks the courage” to effect change.

In showering the SDF with encomium, he added that: “There is no doubt that the SDF is successfully transforming itself in a context where political parties like the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement, CPDM, are afraid to confront their internal changes. We observe that many veteran party leaders are actively altering their respective party statutes to cling to power. We observe that political parties are the private property of their ‘founding fathers’. We even observe the emergence of the personalisation of political struggles”.

Boasting that the SDF embodies courage, he added that: “President Paul Biya is failing to keep his promise to rejuvenate his team. He lacks the courage to part ways with his political allies of 30-50 years. In doing so, he is keeping old trees that no longer produce anything. Worse, he wants to replace 90-year-old trees with 70-year-old trees that are presented as younger, even though they are just as worn out. The country is suffering. We must have the courage to accept going through a transitional phase in Cameroon”.

Using the country as a palm plantation parody, he said in an advanced age, trees no longer produce optimal fruits. 

He offered two options in such a situation: either continue to maintain old trees with no future prospects or regenerate the grove.

As for the SDF, it opted for rejuvenation, and between 2021 and 2023, the party renewed its grassroots structures andprejuvenated its National Executive Committee by 60%, he explained.

“It took considerable political courage for Chairman Ni John Fru Ndi,(now of blessed memory), to agree to step down, along with some of his colleagues from the 1990s. Other colleagues, though weary, resisted,” the Vice Chairman of “the party of change,” pointed out.

He conceded that the “political courage which many political parties have yet to demonstrate, was not without its consequences: the party had to confront an internal protest movement known as the "G27". Furthermore, acts of self-sabotage multiplied over time, to the point some questioned whether launching the rejuvenation process had been a wise decision”. 

He detailed that: “The succession battle had already begun. It lasted a good decade within the SDF and damaged the party's image and the reputations of some of its leaders. This is the reality of large political parties and major successions”.

Without calling names, he predicted that the CPDM and others “...will not escape their own succession battles within their respective political outfits. The major problem with Cameroon's political scene, which now boasts nearly 400 political parties, is that people don't confront political disagreements internally, as they do within the SDF. Instead, they take the shortcut: in case of disagreement, each creates his/her own political party, aiming to establish its own republic”.

He admitted that when a decision to renew party organs and persons is made, a drop in performance should be expected.

“When you cut down old trees to plant saplings, the consequence for the plantation is that it will go through several years without producing,” he detailed. 

That is certainly the situation the SDF has found itself with a free fall, at every election, to a point its candidate had less than two percent at the last presidential election.

The questions it should mull over are: what is the political following of the SDF today? How does the party carry on the democratic legacy introduced by the founding father, the late John Fru Ndi? Will the SDF project itself as the champion of the Anglophone course of marginalisation, which the party stood for at creation?

Has its replacing the old guards provided a lesson for the ruling party to be scared of change?

While The Guardian Post congratulates the SDF on the occasion of its 36th anniversary, it must nonetheless concede that despite the internal changes, it has lost track at the national level.

As its Vice Chairman rightly recommended, “it needs to nurture its own resources. For young plants to grow, weeds must be removed, the soil irrigated, and fertiliser provided,” without which the crops will not survive”.

Resources are not what the CPDM lacks to nurture change, especially in a government often criticised as suffering from inertia, despite promises to do so in “the coming days” that have not come in some five months. So it shouldn’t be glued to the status quo.

However, what is certain, to borrow again from Socrates, is that “change is a fundamental condition of existence, ” whose effect will navigate the socio-economic and political life of a country like Cameroon on the crossroads of political conjecture and uncertainty.

This article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3801 of Friday May 29, 2026